


dreaming in the ashes

by feralphoenix



Category: Yggdra Union
Genre: M/M, Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 22:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The practicalities of using Brongaa's power can make life a little difficult. In which Gulcasa frays and Nessiah frets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dreaming in the ashes

**Author's Note:**

> _(I loved him more for his weakness_ – roses in the rain)
> 
>  
> 
>  **Trigger warning** for minor references to physical and sexual abuse.

You wait for the dust over the battlefield to settle, and when you venture out you take your time, choosing your steps and lifting your skirts clear of the bodies. Being methodical helps you maintain your patience, your clarity. These are tricks that have served you well, but never until these recent years have you been tested quite so severely.

You would know if he was dead, if he had fallen. You know that there is necessarily another explanation involved in his not returning. But the fear remains. What if your emotions have clouded your magic?—what if you’ve made too many assumptions of your own skill level?—what if?—what if?—what if?

The worries are waves upon a violent sea, and you have never been a very good swimmer.

Finally, you set foot upon freshly-turned, lightly scorched bare earth. Your sandals sink into the ground so that your toes brush against the soil.

At the epicenter of the rough bare circle sits the Emperor’s dragon. It blinks placidly and flicks its ears in an unconcerned sort of way, bellied down into the dirt. Its rider sits loose against its side, halfway sprawled over its back.

Something in your chest moves, sinks, and you feel somewhat detached from yourself as you see Gulcasa breathe.

His eyes are closed, and the space beneath them is bruised as if he’s gone weeks without sleep. His breath is deep and comes in great shudders; there’s an obvious layer of sweat on his face, and beneath his armor his clothes are heavily blotched with wet streaks. Color is hard to discern against the black.

You keep walking, measure your steps, and stop a few feet away. His eyelids move minutely—he realizes, at least, that you are here—but other than that there is no reaction from him.

“Your Majesty,” you say, and wait: No response. “Gulcasa,” you correct yourself, and for this he opens his eyes—briefly—before closing them again. A flash of amber.

You perceive, vaguely, that his pupils are opened wide against the gold of his irises, and you let out the breath you’d been holding in a sigh. You’d expected as much, really.

“Gulcasa,” you say again, “this isn’t exactly the appropriate place for a nap.”

He doesn’t resist when you pull him up, but his efforts at movement are feeble at best. It takes several minutes’ maneuvering to get him into the saddle, and once you have, he lies prone there, cheek pressed to his dragon’s shoulder.

“You might at least grace me with an attempt to sit up,” you tell him on an exhale: It keeps your voice light, despite the reproach. “The others will worry.”

“Can’t,” he groans, hoarse.

You sigh.

The dragon looks at you when you delicately seize its reins from beside it. You wonder if the resigned air about its beady yellow eyes is just your anthropomorphizing matters.

Sighing again, you shake the reins limply between fingertips so as not to provoke too much cacophony from your chains, and also so as not to have to grip them with the full of your hands. Aside from being a bit grimy from battle residue, you’re still not entirely sure how much this animal is willing to tolerate from people who aren’t its real rider.

“You know what to do with this,” you say to it with a nod in Gulcasa’s general direction, and the dragon snorts like a horse. It stands up in stilted movements and begins to walk.

This is going to be a very long day.

 

 

Gulcasa staggers into his room like one of your zombies and immediately sets about peeling off his various layers of clothing. He drops tunic and shirt and leathers on the floor in trails, careless, and you shut the door behind you and you lean on it, wishing just a little bit that he’d be more conscious of you watching.

His long hair is flyaway and clings at his back; he shakes it out absently, but it keeps sticking. Small wonder, too: He’s coated in sweat and dirt and blood—most of it, you think, must be that of his enemies’ because heavens know he’s only got a handful of cuts and scrapes. He’s still sweating, in fact, and his sallow skin shines along the contours of his muscles. Puffy scars interrupt their smooth ripples, thick and white, dark around the edges.

He doesn’t quite stumble as he kicks his pants off awkwardly. You shift your weight against the door.

From half the room away you can smell him: Day-old battlefield, solder and smoke and earth, stale blood and salt and sex. Gulcasa stands with his eyes shuttered, naked and already bowing with sleep. There are white dried stains on the insides of his thighs, apparent even when you’re standing behind him, and even though you expected them to be there really, it’s not adequate preparation for actually seeing them.

Centuries of manipulating countries into wars for your own purposes and not one twinge of guilt, but looking at Gulcasa’s ass right now makes you feel like a bad person.

You shift your posture again. You can’t face away from him in case he starts to fall, and as awkward as it is standing here with him completely unabashed of his nakedness, you don’t want your own self-consciousness to make him feel like he has anything to hide. What comfort in his own skin he possesses isn’t something he should lose because of you, not after how he’s had to fight for it. You hold him in the periphery of your senses, a compromise.

“So, you really should discuss this with Emilia if it’s becoming problematic for you.”

Gulcasa turns, just fractionally, enough to open his eyes halfway and give you a sidelong scowl. There’s color in his cheeks. His pupils are still quite wide.

“On the list of all the things I’m going to go to my sister for advice on, my orgasms are not and will never be included.”

“There’s only so much that I can do for you, though. I’ve never been in your position. It’s likely that she has, though, and she might be able to give you some kind of advice. Even though your case and hers have some slight differences, she’s still quite skilled at managing her blood.”

“I don’t—if she’s had the same reactions I do to using our power, I don’t even want to _know.”_ He raises an arm, drags heavy fingers across his face with difficulty.

“You don’t seem to mind that much, discussing things with me.”

“That’s different.” He breathes out. His words are already a bit slurred, probably with exhaustion. “You’ve known from the beginning, that my body’s like this. You were there the first time this happened. And—it’s easier, with a lover. I couldn’t just up and talk about this to somebody else.”

“How many times?” He’s not even this emptied out after spending the night with you; but then, you can’t be sure. Battle is exhausting in and of itself.

Gulcasa is quiet for a long while. “I don’t—know. It’s hard to, to remember, and it’s hard to tell.”

You don’t know what to say to that, and he takes your silence as a cue to shamble across the room and collapse upon the bed. He half-stands and half-lies over the edge for a little while, arms folded underneath him and legs bent like a swoon. There’s an awful dichotomy in the image: A sexual kind of vulnerability, obvious in the way he’s bent over the bed like an invitation for you to just walk over and take him—but with his battle bruises and the come stains all across his legs and stomach he looks used in ways that hollow out your insides.

After a couple of minutes, though, he pushes himself up on his elbows and lifts himself up onto the mattress. He groans with the effort, and through the ragged curtains of his hair you can see the cords standing out in his neck.

“Gulcasa,” you say quietly, not sure what precisely you want to follow that up with.

He curls up on his side, heedless.

He’s lovely like this. Even like this. Wretched and worn down to the bones from fighting his own base nature, he’s still painstakingly sculpted perfection, like a stone statue but pliant in texture. The definition of his muscles stands out in his chest and belly, in his haphazardly folded limbs, and the whole of him is crisscrossed with scars of various ages. His hair is almost long enough to reach his heels, now. Your chest feels weighty every time he shies away from someone’s suggestion of trimming it. In times like these, you think you can almost see the shadow of sideways handprints heavy on his hips. He’s pale. The line of dark red hair that starts at his navel draws your gaze down to the soft curl of his penis stark against his thigh, and it’s hard to look away.

He’s beautiful. Your chest hurts, bright pain all down your sternum; your lower belly and your hamstrings are all cramped up with wanting, and looking at his weariness is making you tired.

You gather up your skirts and steer yourself carefully around all the discarded clothing so that you can stand at his bedside.

He opens his eyes for you, briefly. The pupils are still blown out. It will be a while, most likely, before he can function again.

You hold his hand, interlace your fingers in his, and with your free hand you tease his hair out of his face in little delicate movements.

Gulcasa breathes, closes his eyes so that the lashes brush at his cheeks. “I hate that my body does this now. That I get off on—on using this power to hurt people. This isn’t what I unbound my blood for at all.”

You could repeat the facts to him now, if you wanted to. Explain to him again that he’ll adapt with time, get more used to it and piece together control of himself as days and months and years pass—but that it’s going to take years, because the seal his mother forced on him has caused him to grow damaged and his blood and body and psyche need time to stretch out and heal and reconcile with one another. That he needs time to learn to be. Mention again that he really ought to speak to Emilia if he’s that worried. He’s suggestible when he’s like this. You’ve taken advantage of that without guilt before. If you can maybe convince him to take some steps in the right direction, it might be for the best.

Instead, you stroke his forehead over and over. His skin is hot to the touch, slick with mingled sweat and dirt.

“I can draw up a bath for you if you’d like,” you murmur to him, like a fool. “You’ll feel a lot better—and make considerably less of a mess of those sheets, might I add—if you get clean.”

His eyelids flutter.

His lips tug to the side for just a moment, half smile, half grimace.

“Maybe later,” he says, “my body’s not doing what I tell it, and also I am really damn tired.”

“All right,” you say to him.

Gulcasa falls asleep holding your hand. You hook your ankle around the leg of a chair, reel it up to his bedside, and proceed to sit in it and watch him for the rest of the afternoon.


End file.
